Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – In 2026, Vietnamese social media spotlighted Tieu Nguyen Bao Ngoc, a 28-year-old activist from Ho Chi Minh City, who became the first and only Vietnamese national to join the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF). The flotilla aimed to break Israel’s siege of Gaza by delivering aid by sea.

Two weeks before setting sail across the Mediterranean in May, Bao Ngoc, also known as Ashley, announced her participation in the mission to reach Gaza, a territory where Israel has reportedly killed more than 73,000 Palestinians. She expressed deep sympathy for the Palestinian people, drawing parallels between their suffering and Vietnam’s own history of war crimes committed by Western imperialists, especially the US.

“I woke up on October 8 and was immediately overcome by regret, because I had been aware of the Palestinian cause but didn’t do anything for them,” Bao Ngoc told Al Jazeera. Her activism intensified after Israel bombed the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza in late 2024.

Despite Vietnam’s historical solidarity with Palestine during the 1960s and 1970s, the current Vietnamese government has shown increasing hesitation to uphold this legacy amid expanding military and economic ties with Israel since 2010, according to researcher Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi.

Bao Ngoc’s efforts place a rare national spotlight on Gaza’s suffering in a country where public protest is tightly controlled.

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